I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. And my list of rants about why I “hate” them is long so I won’t bore you with all those. Instead I’ll get right to the point – my main rant with them recently:

The Facebook Messenger App

I’m sure you’re probably remember all the heck that broke loose when the app was first released. There was all sorts of hoopla going on and people sharing links to articles about how the app could access everything (okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic) on your phone if you installed it.

Of course all that hoopla soon died down and everyone started installing it. It took me awhile to install it and then I actually deleted it not long after installing it. I don’t plan on installing it again either. (That’s another story for another time – and no it doesn’t have anything to do with whether it can access info on my phone.)

So anyways, the whole point of this post is to say that I think I must be one of the very few people NOT using the app. Because according to a recent article I came acrossthere are now:

500 Million Facebook Messenger Users!!!

500 million. Holy crap! That’s a whole lot of people. I guess I didn’t realize just how big this social media platform was. I mean I knew it was big but dang 500 million – I can’t even wrap my brain around that number!

Here’s a brief blurb from the article:

While Facebook Messenger has previously passed the 500 million downloads milestone, the fact that it now claims this many people are actively using it, suggests that the original shift may not have been as unpopular as first seemed. Either that, or many folks simply rely too much on Facebook to communicate with friends to resist for long.

I’m curious – are you one of the oodles and oodles of people using Facebook Messenger?

Oh my! And those are just a few of the social media sites. Talk about social media overload!

Last year I had the opportunity to work with a client as her social media manager. One of the first things she complained about when she contacted me was all the time she was wasting with social media marketing. That’s a pretty common complaint but until recently I didn’t really understand just how much time you could waste when it comes to social media. She was spending anywhere from 2-4 hours a day between Facebook, Twitter and Linked In. As I started doing things for her I often found myself wondering how she could spend so much time every day on these sites. Little did I know that I would soon understand.

Side note – I did not do 100% of social media stuff for said client. We followed a 80/20 rule where I could do 80% of the stuff but she had to commit to doing 20% of it. After all it was about her building relationships with her friends/followers and I couldn’t be her and connect with them on a personal level, she had to that herself.

Social Media Time Out

Remember above when I said, little did I know that I would soon understand (in regards to that client spending so much time on social media sites)? Well, unfortunately I get it now. Recently I wanted to know just how much time I was spending being productive wasting on Facebook. I spent a day timing myself and the results weren’t pretty. 30 minutes here, 10 minutes there, 20 minutes here, 5 minutes there…they add up to probably a lot more than you think. I know for me they sure did. I’m sad to admit that I wasted almost 4 hours! Yes, 4 hours! Mind you that was from 10am to midnight but still! That’s ridiculous. And sadly I can’t say that I was even doing anything business related!

So, today (September 1st) I embarked on my month long social media time out! Yep, sometimes even adults need a time out too 😉 During the next 30 days I plan on focusing on my business! I’m going to put a social media plan into place so that when I do come back on October 1st I have a goal when it comes to Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc.

Do you know how much time you spend on social media sites each day/every week?

If you don’t, I challenge you to time yourself and see how long you’re spending. I don’t necessarily recommend you take a time out, especially if you do a lot of business related things on Twitter, Facebook, etc. But maybe it’s time to measure whether you’re getting an ROI (return on investment) on that time you’re spending with social media sites.

When I first joined the social media site Facebook it was just going to be for fun. Meaning, I was going to allow only family and personal friends on my page. Soon clients and business contacts were sending friend requests and I was accepting them forgetting about wanting to keep business and personal life separate from the other.

At one point I decided it was time to start separating the two again so I created a Facebook Fan Page and began working on building up my “fans”and building a relationship with them. Then in the blink of an eye my page was gone. Vanished into thin air, nowhere to be found!

So I left things as they were – clients and business related contacts/friends on my personal page and didn’t worry about the need to separate the two…until recently.